Acoustic Guitar 279.pdf

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AcousticGuitar.com 5

Special Focus

Texas Bluegrass

18 Fresh Americana

Quiles & Cloud blend old and new in acoustic collaboration

By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers 20 Bluegrass Band of Brothers

How the Gibson Brothers got their groove

By Pat Moran

24 The ‘Circle’ Unbroken

Celebrating the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s enduring classic

By Mark Kemp

32 Welcome to the Jungle

Instrument makers and players— including Slash—are mesmerized by the Tree

By Mark Kemp

Features

Miscellany

‘Will the Circle Be

Unbroken did not

come about by

magic. It took a lot

of hard work, lucky

breaks, and a great

career risk for the

Nitty Gritty Dirt

Band.’

p. 24

L—R Bob Carpenter, Jeff Hanna, Emmylou Harris, Jimmie Fadden (background), Jimmy Ibbotson

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6 March 2016

CONTENTS

NEWS 13 The Beat

The Spirit of John Fahey tour; Chris Isaak goes Nashville

16 Five Minutes With . . .

Eclectic flatpicker Jon Stickley

PLAY 51 Songcraft

Peggy Seeger reflects on her Child Ballads collection

54 The Basics

Unlocking I-IV-V progressions

58 Weekly Workout

How to be a better accompanist

62 Woodshed

Rag pickin’ lesson, Pt. 2

Songs to Play 66 Ruby’s Eyes

Tommy Emmanuel’s fingerstyle ballad

70 Will the Circle Be Unbroken

The sad but uplifting perennial

72 O the Wind and Rain

A Child Ballad murder tale

AG TRADE 77 Shoptalk

Staten Island’s Mandolin Brothers up for sale

78 Makers & Shakers

Custom builder Linda Manzer

82 Guitar Guru

The glue quandary

84 Review: Martin 00-15E

Vintage look, modern electronics

86 Review: Taylor 326e

Baritone packs a wallop

88 Review: Blueridge BG-1500E

A super jumbo with a modern twist

90 Review: L.R. Baggs Session Acoustic DI

Impressive direct input box and comp/EQ pedal

98 Great Acoustics

Milk Carton Kids: In perfect harmony

MIXED MEDIA 93 Playlist

The Allman Brothers’ Idlewild South gets a deluxe reissue; also, Eric Bibb and J.J. Milteau’s Lead Belly’s Gold, Punch Brothers’ The Wireless EP, and Nouveaux Honkies’ Blues for Country

Martin 00-15E, p. 84 Dreadnought AVD6DTS Grand Concert AVC6DTS Parlor AVN6DTS

ibanez.com

...

Drawing on an epoch of American guitar design, these instruments

are inspired by three periods of U.S. history: The parlor---borne of the

Civil War era, the Grand Concert---from the turn of the century, and

the Dreadnought, a creature of the roaring 20s. Rich with tone from

another era, each model features a solid Spruce top with

Mahogany back and sides, and is augmented by vintage period

touches like antique nickel tuners and aged bone saddle and nut.

...

DISTRESSED TOBACCO SUNBURST LIMITED

...

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Dreadnought AVD6DTS Grand Concert AVC6DTS Parlor AVN6DTS

ibanez.com

...

Drawing on an epoch of American guitar design, these instruments

are inspired by three periods of U.S. history: The parlor---borne of the

Civil War era, the Grand Concert---from the turn of the century, and

the Dreadnought, a creature of the roaring 20s. Rich with tone from

another era, each model features a solid Spruce top with

Mahogany back and sides, and is augmented by vintage period

touches like antique nickel tuners and aged bone saddle and nut.

...

DISTRESSED TOBACCO SUNBURST LIMITED

...

(8)

8 March 2016

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AG ONLINE

Enjoy a recent Acoustic Guitar Session with singer and guitarist Shawn Colvin. Visit acousticguitar.com/sessions to check out AG’s interview/ performance series featuring Richard Thompson, Ani DiFranco, Seth Avett, Peter Rowan, Della Mae, Bruce Cockburn, Valerie June, Julian Lage, Eliza Gilkyson, Preston Reed, Laurie Lewis, and many others.

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005-009_279_TOC.indd 8 12/29/15 2:52 PM

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䄀䌀伀唀匀吀䤀䌀

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10 March 2016

Those friends included former Blue Grass Boy Peter Rowan, longtime friend Lyle Lovett, fiddler Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and banjo player Danny Barnes of the Bad Livers.

The special section also features a look at five Texas music acts steeped in bluegrass, though not typically associated with that music, and a roundup of seven Lone Star State festivals that feature bluegrass music by regional and national acts.

Elsewhere, you’ll find a feature on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 50th anniversary, or to be more precise, the making of their landmark Will the Circle Be Unbroken album; and an article on the Tree, an ancient Honduran mahogany trunk that crashed to the jungle floor decades ago only to find its way into a custom guitar for the rocker Slash, among others.

There also is a profile of guitar maker and innovator Linda Manzer, an interview with the legendary folk artist Peggy Seeger, a lesson on being a better accompanist, and much more.

Play on.

—Greg Cahill

T

he Lone State State isn’t the first place you think of when talk turns to bluegrass. But

our Texas bluegrass special section, penned by contributing editor Mark Kemp, shows that there’s plenty to consider, from such early pioneers as the Mayfield Brothers to the blue-grass roots of the Dixie Chicks to Robert Earl Keen, a singer-songwriter with his boots planted firmly on the front porch.

Keen recorded an excellent bluegrass album last year, Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions (woefully absent when the Grammy Award nominations were announced in the fall). He sat down in the AG offices recently to shoot a Ses-sions video and share a few stories about his love for the genre, as well as the stumbling blocks he’d put in his own path as a bluegrass artist. “I was not comfortable with my voice singing blue-grass,” Keen told Kemp. “[But] I always had an affinity for bluegrass lyrics—the songs them-selves, how cool the stories are. So, I eventually worked my way through the idea that I couldn’t do bluegrass, and I invited all these friends of mine to come in and pick with me.”

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The roots of Texas bluegrass: The Mayfield Brothers

THE FRONT PORCH

©20

16 SANT

A CRUZ GUIT

AR COMP

ANY

Within its walls are the instruments that made you passionate,

and the people who understand your passion. They share

your thrill of acquisition, and always welcome you to stop in

and see what's new. You still stare into the window like a kid

every time you pass by. Everyone should be lucky enough to

have a local guitar shop, and we all need to frequent the

stores that we want to keep in our towns. Music is personal,

on every level. Take pride in knowing who built your guitar

and who sold it to you.

_{Treasure your local guitar shop.}

local guitar shop

is a treasure

Yo u r

Thanks to all for sharing in our journey

(11)

©20

16 SANT

A CRUZ GUIT

AR COMP

ANY

Within its walls are the instruments that made you passionate,

and the people who understand your passion. They share

your thrill of acquisition, and always welcome you to stop in

and see what's new. You still stare into the window like a kid

every time you pass by. Everyone should be lucky enough to

have a local guitar shop, and we all need to frequent the

stores that we want to keep in our towns. Music is personal,

on every level. Take pride in knowing who built your guitar

and who sold it to you.

_{Treasure your local guitar shop.}

local guitar shop

is a treasure

Yo u r

Thanks to all for sharing in our journey

(12)

Serious Guitars

| www.collingsguitars.com

Julian Lage

and Collings Guitars

(13)

NEWS

Spirit of

John Fahey

Tour

Members of the legendary

Takoma 7 reunite for new tour

BY KENNY BERKOWITZ

15

The Beat Chris Isaak goes Nashville

14

The Beat The League of Women Strummers

16

5 Minutes with . . .

The modern bluegrass of Jon Stickley

THE BEAT

CONT. ON PG. 14

B

ack in 1959, guitarist money he’d saved as a gas-station atten-John Fahey took dant to start the Takoma record label, creating a home not only for his own American primitive recordings, but also for second-generation players. These players shared his love of country blues with a twist and together they reimagined the possibilities of fingerstyle guitar. Now, three of his earliest signings—

Toulouse Engelhardt, Peter Lang, and Rick Ruskin—are hitting the road for the Takoma

Records Guitar Masters Tour, making stops this spring in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington.

“Fahey was a very strange cat, and you never knew what to expect,” says Engelhardt, who has kept early letters Fahey wrote him.

COU R TES Y OF V A NG U A R D R ECOR DS John Fahey

5 ESSENTIAL

TAKOMA ALBUMS

Bukka White Mississippi Blues 1964 John Fahey

The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

1965

Leo Kottke,

Peter Lang & John Fahey

Leo Kottke, Peter Lang & John Fahey

1974

Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Max Ochs, Harry Taussig, Bukka White

Contemporary Guitar: Spring ’67

1967

Leo Kottke

6- and 12-String Guitar aka The Armadillo Album

1969

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14 March 2016 THE BEAT

THE LEAGUE

OF WOMEN

VOTERS TOUR

Patty Griffi n, Sara Watkins, and Anaïs Mitchell will hit the road

this spring to urge Americans to get out and vote.

Teamed up with the nonpartisan organization League of Women Voters, the trio will hit 38 cities throughout the southern and northeastern United States to help fans obtain election and voting information.

The Use Your Voice Tour kicks off February 12 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and runs through April 2, ending in Northridge, California.

For details, visit lwv.org. —Whitney Phaneuf “His criticism of my work was brutal,

espe-c i a l l y f o r a y o u n g , 2 0 - s o m e t h i n g g u i t a r dreamer. One day, he would say he thought my music was a bunch of crap. Then the next day, he would write again, and say my solos were some of the prettiest stuff he had ever heard. I remember him saying to me, in his funny high-pitched vibrato, ‘You’re the next guy, the next gunslinger who will enter the O.K. Corral. You need to keep developing your own style.’”

So Engelhardt did, mixing pop, psychedelia, and the sounds of SoCal beach culture to become “The Segovia of Surf,” while also teach-ing community-college biology.

Lang’s path was equally indirect, recording a ground-breaking album with Fahey and Leo Kottke in 1974 before switching to a career in

film animation, struggling with his health, and only recently returning to performance.

Only Ruskin has remained in music the entire time, self-releasing albums of gospel and blues, including the new Whatever Happened to Blind Matzoh Leftkowitz?, and running a record-ing studio in Seattle.

“I think [Ruskin] sums it up best for all of us when he says we don’t think like other guitarists,” says Engelhardt, who followed Fahey’s advice to add more tunings, minor keys, and atonality to his music. “As the years went on, I began to realize that John was trying to help me reach my potential. In the end, he was right, and I appreci-ated him as my mentor. In essence, this tour is about his dedication to steel-string fingerstyle guitar and the enduring legacy he left behind.”

‘This tour is about

John’s dedication

to steel-string

fingerstyle guitar

and the enduring

legacy he

left behind.’

TOULOUSE ENGELHARDT

Anaïs Mitchell

www.kysermusical.com

INTRODUCING THE NEWEST MEMBER OF

THE KYSER

®

_QUICK-CHANGE

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_FAMILY

ROSEWOOD

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KYSER®_{MUSICAL PRODUCTS}

MADE IN USA

(15)

AcousticGuitar.com 15 For his first album of new songs since 2009,

Chris Isaak followed the advice of his friend Stevie Nicks and recorded in Nashville. He’s glad he did, because he got to have breakfast with Robert Plant, work with A-list producers Dave Cobb and Paul Worley, and co-write with Music City hitmakers Michelle Branch, Natalie Hemby, Caitlyn Smith, Gordie Sampson, and James Slater.

The album, First Comes the Night, was released on Vanguard in late 2015.

“I hardly ever co-write, and I was worried they were going to try to make it country,” says Isaak, talking between episodes of X Factor Aus-tralia. “Usually, I’ll just write by myself, because that’s who I’m with. But somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you try?’ So I did, and had a great experience. I went in with some songwriting ideas and just had fun. Fun writing. Fun recording.”

You can hear it, too.

In the hell-bent, post-rockabilly “Down in Flames,” Isaak opens with, “Kennedy got it in a Lincoln, Caesar got it in the back/ Somebody told me Hank Williams died in his Cadillac,” a line the singer-songwriter has been carrying around for years.

Others are more serious. “The Way Things Really Are” inventories lost love in the line “this broken heart, some photographs/a cancelled check, a couple laughs.”

“I don’t know what exactly that picture is,” says Isaak, “but it’s a dark picture.”

First Comes the Night—which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Top Rock Album chart—is livelier than Isaak’s previous album, Beyond the Sun, his 2011 set of cover songs associated with Memphis and recorded at the city’s famed Sun Studios. More importantly, the new album is a great reminder of everything to love about Isaak. There’s heartache, there’s crooning, and, yes, he’s still aiming for a happy Elvis song.

Even though it was recorded in Nashville, the album packs loads of retro style, with all the songs written and recorded on Isaak’s iconic Gibson J-200, a ’90s model with his name written across the top in mother-of-toilet-seat (aka pearl-oid). “Most of my playing is rhythm, with a few little runs in between when I’m singing,” Isaak says. “I hate it when a band feels like it has two lead guitar players battling each other—I want the rhythm guitar to be closer to the snare drum and the conga than to the lead guitar.

“It helps when a singer can accompany himself, because he can punctuate his rhythm in a way that it’s really hard for another person to do. I’m pretty good at getting the rhythm I want, but when it comes to making Metallica-thrashing leads, forget it. I’m a terrible lead-g u i t a r p l a y e r, I c o u l d n e v e r p l a y l e a d i n somebody’s band,” Isaak adds.

“But I wish someone would ask me.” —K.B.

CHRIS ISAAK GOES NASHVILLE

Chris Isaak SH E R Y L L OU IS 013-015_279_Beat.indd 15 1/5/16 2:11 PM

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16 March 2016

Martin D-18, which he’s been

playing ever since. Rice—along

with Doc Watson, who came

before, and Bryan Sutton, who

came after—is a major influence

on the Jon Stickley Trio’s Lost at

Last, in which the guitarist joins

with Lyndsay Pruett (fiddle)

and Patrick Armitage (drums)

to create an exhilarating,

all-acoustic swirl of newgrass,

rock, dubstep, Gypsy jazz,

hip-hop, and jam that somehow

manages to stay close to

tradition.

Bluegrass

on His Mind

Jon Stickley is steeped in

Tony Rice and a modern sound

BY KENNY BERKOWITZ

5 MINUTES WITH...

After surviving teenage

obsessions with grunge,

shred, and math rock, guitarist

Jon Stickley found his way

to bluegrass, switching from

electric guitar to mandolin as

a student at the University of

North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

From there, he started digging

into the music of the David

Grisman Quintet, where he

discovered newgrass flatpicking

and the band’s original

guitarist, Tony Rice. So Stickley

shifted again, picking up a 1956

What do you love about Tony Rice?

His music is full of style and personality. There are so many great flatpickers out there, and some even have better tone than Tony had in his prime. But there’s something about Tony’s combination of attitude and technical prowess that’s cool and rocking and hardcore and still really beautiful at the same time. He has this beautiful tone, played hard.

After discovering traditional bluegrass, why didn’t you stay with it?

I started to think of ways to make the music more me. I have these techniques I’ve come up with over the course of my bluegrass study and I decided to write some songs around them, and that became the basis of the original trio sound. To me, our first album sounds a little more like bluegrass picking over different drum beats. It’s like a five-piece bluegrass lineup: A roll on the snare is like the banjo, the kick drum is where the upright bass would be, and the hi-hat is the mandolin chop. Plus, fiddle and guitar. But then we were like, “Man, it would be really cool if we had a bass, too.” So Lyndsay and I discovered these octave pedals, and we both use them to play bass. We’ve given our instruments the capa-bility to reach down to the drum sonic range, and it’s made the trio sound a lot more cohesive. And it’s not studio trickery. We’re still playing our acoustic instruments, and what you hear on the album is exactly what you hear when we play live.

What does this new album say about who you are?

When I think about it, I would say it’s a kid who has grown up listening to all sorts of music, but was heavily influenced by punk and grunge, and then became obsessed with blue-grass picking. And it’s that kid, grown up and taking a look back at what shaped his musical taste and compositional leaning, and it’s just trying to figure out what song to write next.

Do you still practice along with Tony Rice records?

Definitely. Whenever I’m trying to work on chops or work on a feel, that’s what I do.

Can you keep up?

I’m working on it.

Jon Stickley Trio

Lost at Last Self-released A US TI N S TE INSICK A T PH ISH B ON E 016_279_5_Mins.indd 16 12/29/15 2:56 PM

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18 March 2016

n a courtyard stage at the FreshGrass festival in western Massachusetts, Quiles and Cloud gather around a single microphone. Maria Quiles (pronounced key-less) sways in her batik skirt, singing lead and playing fingerstyle rhythm on a cutaway Martin, while Rory Cloud, goateed with a long ponytail hanging over his sky-blue jacket, adds seamless vocal harmonies and silvery lead lines on a sunburst Guild. Across the stage, Oscar Westesson anchors the sound on upright bass, deepening the grooves with touches of string and wood percussion.

Quiles and Cloud are a long way from their home in San Francisco, but this early-fall festi-val in the Berkshire Mountains is where, in 2014, they took a big step onto the national

scene by winning the FreshGrass duo contest. Part of their prize was the opportunity to make a n a l b u m p r o d u c e d b y b a n j o m a s t e r a n d Compass Records co-founder Alison Brown, and the result of those sessions is hot off the press at FreshGrass 2015.

Quiles and Cloud’s new Beyond the Rain is a mix of originals (“Black Sky Lightning,” “Missis-sippi River”) and traditional tunes (“Deep Ellum Blues,” “Faded Flowers”) and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” The album, along with many months of grassroots touring around the U.S., introduces the duo as a compel-ling new voice on the Americana scene. Though clearly on the path blazed by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings—and trod by fellow travelers such as the Milk Carton Kids, Mandolin Orange,

FRESH

AMERICANA

Quiles and Cloud blend

old and new in tight

acoustic collaboration

By Jeffrey

Pepper

Rodgers

EMIL Y S E V IN

O

L—R Cloud, Quiles, Westesson

and Pharis and Jason Romero—Quiles and Cloud’s sound is not particularly Appalachian or twangy. Their music leans more toward contem-porary folk and blues, with a touch of soul.

After their FreshGrass set, Quiles, Cloud, and Westesson sit in the backstage artist lounge to talk about how they came together. Quiles and Cloud met in 2011 at an open mic in a San Francisco cathedral, finding not only immediate musical chemistry but a shared sense that the time was right, in Quiles’ words, “to go balls-to-the-wall with music.

“Rory was out in San Francisco playing all the time, sort of living out of his car, and I was living in my uncle’s basement,” she says. “So we found each other at a time when we were ready to commit.”

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WHAT

THEY

PLAY

MARIA QUILES

1999 Martin DCME mahogany dreadnought. Martin SP strings. Paige regular capo and Shubb C7B three-string partial capo (to simulate DADGAD tuning onstage). Korg PitchHawk-G tuner.

‘[WE WERE READY]

TO GO BALLS-TO-THE-WALL

WITH MUSIC.’

MARIA QUILES

Both grew up surrounded by music and art. Cloud’s mother fronted the folk-rock band Cheryl Cloud and Common Ground, performing around southern California through the ’80s and up until she passed away from cancer in 1995. Initially, Rory played mostly electric guitar in various rock, jazz, and hip-hop projects, but he eventually came back to his folk roots—and now exclusively plays his mother’s old Guild dreadnought.

“I started getting back into writing songs, inspired by people like Nick Drake and song-writers that I got exposed to later,” he recalls, “and I started messing with alternate tunings on the acoustic guitar.”

Meanwhile, up in San Francisco, Quiles’ parents were ballroom dance teachers and painters. As a kid she played classical violin, but then, she says, “The acoustic guitar came into my life. I love playing violin and I still do it, but for me, guitar is a great tool for writing. I’ve dabbled in other roles in electric music, but I really resonate with an acoustic guitar.”

Quiles and Cloud made their first album, Long Time Coming, five months after they met, and soon afterward connected with Westesson, who joins them for California gigs and some-times on tour elsewhere. At first the group’s rep-ertoire mostly consisted of songs written individually, but the two quickly began develop-ing their duo voice. “The sound that we have now has very much been developed through this project,” says Cloud. “We both sounded different w h e n w e g o t t o g e t h e r a n d h a d d i f f e r e n t approaches to arranging.”

Most of the duo’s songs originate with a lyrical or musical idea from Quiles. “She’ll bring a framework to me,” says Cloud. “It might be half written and she needs a second opinion or ear on lyrics, or structural things with the tune, so I’m the person who comes in and tweaks the arrangement a little bit or adds something to the chord progression. Then there’s the whole harmony process that we go through, where we sit for a while and figure out what the nice notes are to add color to the arrangement.”

Quiles and Cloud tune into music beyond the folk world but feel most connected with a r t i s t s s u c h a s P u n c h B r o t h e r s , A o i f e O’Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz. Cloud says he appreciates the open-ended way those musi-cians cross-pollinate genres with the directness and simplicity of acoustic folk.

“I spent a lot of time getting my tone from amps and pickups,” says Cloud. “It’s really refreshing to be in this scene and get all of your sound just from your fingertips and the wood

resonating.” AG

RORY CLOUD

1976 sunburst Guild D-35 that belonged to his mother, Cheryl Cloud. Martin Retro Tony Rice signature strings (MTR13 Monel). BlueChip picks. Shubb capo. Korg PitchHawk-G tuner. Cloud uses a Walker strap from Flying Possum Leather that loops over the upper bout.

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20 March 2016

L-R

Clayton Campbell, Eric Gibson, Mike Barber, Leigh Gibson, Jesse Brock

e i g h a n d E r i c G i b s o n w e r e k i d s working the family dairy farm when bluegrass rocked their world. At the time, the internet hardly existed and even cable TV hadn’t yet reached their rural neck of the woods. But if you’re thinking the Gibson boys grew up in the hollers of Kentucky, Tennessee, or North Carolina, think again.

“You’ll have a hard time finding anywhere more remote than the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains,” Leigh Gibson says.

The Gibsons’ bond with bluegrass happened in upstate New York less than an hour’s drive from the Canadian border. Leigh Gibson admits it’s “not exactly traditional bluegrass country,” but says, “The way we grew up was similar to the first generation of bluegrass people. The subjects they wrote about, like family moving away to find work, resonated with us.”

Formed in 1984, the Gibson Brothers Band sought early on to balance the traditions of seminal bluegrass artists like Bill Monroe with innovations drawn from classic country. The band has since amassed a devoted following through 12 studio albums and a rigorous

touring schedule. Named Emerging Artist of the Year in 1998 at the International Bluegrass Music Association, Leigh Gibson went on to host the IBMA’s 2013 awards ceremony.

Last year, the Gibson Brothers Band released Brotherhood, a celebration of the music of earlier brother acts, from the Louvins to the Monroes to the Everlys.

Brotherhood drives home one key element that’s enraptured GBB fans for years: the uncanny, almost telepathic closeness of the brothers’ entwined vocal harmonies. Yet, Leigh Gibson says the music and rhythm are equally as important as harmony in contributing to the band’s enduring appeal.

“We listen intently to one another, and try to find common ground,” Gibson says. “At this point, we have an intuition for one another. I can sense what the other guy is going to do.”

FINDING THE GROOVE

“The key word is restraint,” Gibson says. “When you listen to the great guitarists, you feel restraint in their playing. They’re not filling every hole and expressing every phrase.”

WHAT

LEIGH

GIBSON

PLAYS

A fire destroyed Gibson’s beloved Martin in the late 1990s and nowadays he plays a Brazilian rosewood dreadnought built by Wayne Henderson at Dream Guitars. It’s one of a matching pair of D-28-style instruments Henderson made for both Gibson siblings.

L

BLUEGRASS

BAND OF

BROTHERS

Leigh Gibson tells how the

Gibson Brothers got their groove

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22 March 2016 GIBSON BROTHERS

The longstanding relationships among the other members contribute to that groove. Except for new mandolin player Jesse Brock, who joined about two years ago, the players have been locking in with each other for at least a decade. Fiddler Clayton Campbell joined the Gibsons in 2004. Bassist Mike Barber has been playing with the brothers for 22 years.

“I can’t tell you how many times Mike Barber and I have hit a walk-up together that we’ve never done before,” Gibson says. “We For the type of music the Gibson Brothers

Band does, playing rhythm guitar is Leigh Gib-son’s most important job, he says, “because it goes much deeper than keeping time.”

In bluegrass, it’s vitally important to “set a groove and keep it going, to make every song have its own identity and personality through rhythm and groove. Once [the band] gets a nice feel bubbling, then I can slash a bit with my right hand, brush chords a little longer and accent dynamically.”

both hear and anticipate it at the same time.” Such synchronicity might seem magical, he says, but “it’s magic that took countless years of playing together to create.”

OH, BROTHERS!

Leigh Gibson’s parents gave him his first “real guitar”—a Martin D-28—when he was 13. “It was way more guitar than I was player,” he remembers. “It inspired me to get better.”

He and Eric took music lessons at Dick’s Country Store and Music Oasis in nearby Chur-ubusco. Eric was inspired by a Flatt and Scruggs cassette; Leigh started by “learning the nuts and bolts of the guitar neck” from a book on flatpicking. While the boys looked for bluegrass to emulate, the influences of its “close cousin— classic country” kept creeping in, Gibson says.

“It’s the music that we grew up listening to on the farm, in my dad’s pick-up truck. [It] was influenced by Western swing and cowboy music,” Gibson says. “When you think about it, Monroe was listening to all that stuff, too. He was singing Gene Autry.”

Gibson was attracted early on to Tom T. Hall’s guitar playing, too, and “the kind of brushy rhythm that Cowboy Jack [Clement] brought to country music on Waylon Jennings’ records. Once I became a guitar player, those sounds were already in my head.”

Eclectic influences still hold sway for the brothers. “Maybe some folks might see us as rule-breakers, but I don’t think we are,” Gibson says. “We do what we think makes us sound interesting and unique. We’re a bluegrass band but we’re also the Gibson Brothers.”

Although the Gibsons aren’t afraid to experi-ment, they don’t do it for its own sake. “The arrangement is critical to a song,” Gibson says. “The best words, the best story in any song, can be ruined by a poor arrangement.” That was clear when the band was trying to work out the right approach to a tune by a favorite duo. “We couldn’t find a Stanley Brothers song that we sounded good singing, and that hadn’t been recorded to death,” Gibson says.

An offhand comment by Rounder Records founder Ken Irwin gave the brothers a much-needed epiphany: “If you slow down a fast song or speed up a slow one, you’ll get a good inter-pretation that nobody has ever heard.” Gibson laughed and joked to his brother, “What if we did ‘How Mountain Girls Can Love’ as a fast waltz?”

It worked.

But Gibson cautions against “trying to force fit anything into music. It either fits or it doesn’t,” he says.

And that’s where Gibson’s key word— restraint—comes back into the picture. AG

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24 March 2016

L—R

Mother Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, Oswald Kirby, and Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Photo taken during the Will the Circle Be Unbroken sessions in August 1971 at Woodland Studios in Nashville.

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THE

‘

CIRCLE

’

By Mark Kemp

Remembering

an enduring

classic as the

Nitty Gritty

Dirt Band

celebrates a

half-century

of crossing

cultures and

generations

WILLIAM E. MCEUEN PHOTO

UNBROKEN

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26 March 2016

NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND

She laughed, told more stories, and helped bring me closer to the music of my own region and bloodline.

I will be forever grateful to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for that.

BENEFICIARIES OF THE ‘CIRCLE’

“I can’t tell you,” John McEuen begins, and then pauses. “I literally can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard your exact same story, with just a few details changed.” The Dirt Band’s fiddler, banjo player, mandolinist, and guitarist has been talking with me for an hour about the unintended chain reaction he and his group set off when they decided it would be cool to record with Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, Roy Acuff, Mother May-belle Carter, and other Nashville greats. “It was a very magical thing that we didn’t predict,” McEuen says.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken did not come about by magic, though. It took a lot of hard work, lucky breaks, and a great career risk for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with a tour the group kicked off in September 2015 at the Opry’s most well-known home, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The sold-out show, which will air on PBS in March, featured a string of famous admir-ers, including singer-songwriter John Prine, singer-guitarist Vince Gill, fiddler Alison Krauss, mandolin player Sam Bush, and early Dirt Band member Jackson Browne.

“I was a freshman in high school,” Gill told the audience as he joined the Dirt Band onstage at the Ryman show. “‘Mr. Bojangles’ had come out, and it was a huge hit. I played the banjo a little bit . . . . There was a rock band in our area in Oklahoma City that was the hottest rock band—they were the coolest things ever. I was kind of a dork, because I played the banjo. They were going to do ‘Mr. Bojangles’ in their show at the school . . . and they asked me if I would play the banjo on ‘Mr. Bojangles’ with them. It was one of the coolest things that ever hap-pened to me, because I was accepted.”

McEuen, speaking by phone from a plane about to take off for Canada, laughs apprecia-tively at all the stories he’s heard about the Dirt Band’s impact. He reels off a few more memo-rable quotes: “‘I was in my room, 16 years old, playing rock ’n’ roll, and I put the Circle album on, and my dad heard it and opened the door and said, “Son, what are you listening to?” It was the first time we’d talked in three years and we’ve been best friends since.’ And, ‘I was playing classical violin until I was 23, and then I heard Vassar Clements on Circle and I never picked up another sheet of music again.’’’ hat in the world are you listening to

in there?”

My mom was confused. It was the early 1970s, and she was hearing acoustic guitars, banjos, and fiddles blaring from the wooden stereo console in our living room. Ordi-narily, mom would have been fussing at me for cranking the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch” at full volume. (“You don’t even know what a bitch is,” she’d once told me, with a grin. “It’s not a nice word.”) At best, she would hear me happily singing along to hits by the more acceptable Beatles or Jackson Five.

But on this day, mom was hearing the “Grand Ole Opry Song”—and it was telling her story over music that was as familiar as the collard greens we’d have with Sunday dinner:

It’s time for Roy Acuff to go to Memphis on his train

With Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield and lazy Jim Day.

Turn on all your radios, I know that you will wait

To hear Little Jimmy Dickens sing, “Take an old cold tater and wait.”

Joan Carlton Kemp knew Little Jimmy Dickens. She knew Roy Acuff. As a little girl, my mom had lived in Nashville for a spell, before the textile industry sent my grandfather to a mill in North Carolina. Her older siblings, Carolyn and Evelyn, had been members of the Grand Ole Opry, where every Saturday night they’d performed onstage as the Carlton Sisters. In those days, the Opry family would regularly hold picnics out in the country. On one such occasion, according to family lore, Acuff saved my mom’s life when she wandered into a bull pen, her red-and-white checkered dress flap-ping in the breeze, teasing one of the hulking animals. Acuff jumped the fence, grabbed my mom, and brought her to safety.

I didn’t know any of this at 13, when I went to my hometown record store and bought the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s landmark 1972 album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. All I knew of this band of Southern California hippies was that they’d had a hit with “Mr. Bojangles,” their new album featured a bunch of old people from Nashville—and everybody was talking about it. To be sure, the music on this album was pretty jarring to me. Mom feigned embarrassment. “I don’t like that stuff,” she said, scrunching up her face at the twangy chaos. “They called us hillbillies. You can go back to listening to the Rolling Stones now.”

It was clear to me, though, that my musical choice that day had made my mother happy.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 triple-disc m i l e s t o n e . U n l i k e o t h e r c l a s s i c A m e r i c a n albums of the rock era—such as Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On—Circle is expo-nentially larger than the artist name on the record spine. Its casual and genial musical com-munication among a group of young California hippies and older Nashville veterans was healing in a way that no amount of introspec-tion or public protest could be during those dif-ficult years of Vietnam War demonstrations, civil-rights struggles, and labor union losses.

“I think what came out of those sessions is that there were these two gaps that were bridged—a generation gap and also the cultural gap,” Dirt Band singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna said in a video interview at the time of Circle’s 30th anniversary. “You know, there were peace marches and Nixon—the country was divided.

“This was also around the time of the film Easy Rider,” Hanna continued. “So, we’re think-ing, ‘Man, the [rednecks] that shot Peter Fonda [in the film] look just like those guys we’re going to Nashville to record with.’ Of course, the element that wiped out all of that miscon-ception was the music. It helped take away some of the prejudice on both sides.”

The Nashville musicians were getting push-back, too. “I know that there was a lot of explaining for the Scruggs family and for Mr. Acuff and for the Carters,” Hanna said. “People were saying, ‘What are you doing making music with these scruffy dudes from the West Coast?’”

Circle was also the culmination of a perfect musical storm. By the early 1970s, country and bluegrass already had begun to seep more and more into popular music, sometimes as parody, but more often as tribute. The Dirt Band played a big role in this. Though rock bands had long flirted with country—in 1965, the Beatles released a cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” as the flip side of “Yesterday,” and that same year, the Byrds released a shimmery folk-rock rendition of the Porter Wagoner country hit “A Satisfied Mind”—few were doing the kind of bluegrass hoedowns heard on the Dirt Band’s self-titled debut album. Released in 1967, the record produced a minor folk-rock hit, “Buy for Me the Rain,” but it also included lots of jug-band novelty songs and the McEuen-penned b l u e g r a s s i n s t r u m e n t a l “ D i s m a l S w a m p . ” McEuen had been inspired by the Dillards, a more traditional bluegrass band that made inroads into the rock world via the folk boom of the early ’60s.

“I was captivated by the Dillards,” McEuen says. “I was playing the acoustic guitar, learning

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Christopher from Savannah, GA

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(28)

28 March 2016

how to play ‘Freight Train’ and things like that—fingerpicking guitar, you know—and six m o n t h s i n t o t h a t , I s a w t h e D i l l a r d s a n d thought, ‘Golly, Doug Dillard—he’s really some-thing. That looks exciting!’”

Between 1967 and 1970, the Dirt Band con-tinued to explore old-time country music, while in the larger music world, others were doing the same thing. In 1968, the Byrds released Sweetheart of the Rodeo, featuring South Caro-lina-born Gram Parsons, who’d left an earlier proto-country-rock outfit called the Interna-tional Submarine Band. With covers of songs by the Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard—and a classic Parsons tune, “Hickory Wind”—Sweet-heart put country music front and center in the hip rock world. The following year, Parsons formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, which released another country-rock classic, The Gilded Palace of Sin.

By 1970, the Dirt Band had pulled out all the stops and gone full-fledged country and bluegrass on Uncle Charlie and his Dog Teddy, although much of the album was still well within the folk-rock idiom. It included gorgeous renditions of Mike Nesmith’s “Some of Shelly’s Blues” and Kenny Loggins’ “House at Pooh Corner” (both released as singles), alongside old-time and bluegrass tunes such as “Chicken Reel,” “Clinch Mountain Backstep,” and Earl Scruggs’ “Randy Lynn Rag.” But the highlight of Uncle Charlie was a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” that rocketed to the Billboard Top 10.

All of that helped when McEuen and his brother Bill, the Dirt Band’s manager and pro-ducer, walked into the office of Liberty Records’ president Mike Stewart to make a case for doing an album of purely traditional bluegrass and Appalachian folk with a star-studded cast of veteran Nashville players.

“When we went in to make the pitch, Mike Stewart listened for about a half an hour and then said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to sell this, but I’ll put up the money.’ And he did. He put up $22,000.”

A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

The future members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band didn’t have 22 cents among them when they first met as teenagers hanging out at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Long Beach, Califor-nia. They did have a mutual love of folk and jug-band music, though. They’d flop down in the six or seven chairs around a coffee table inside the store and jam on acoustic instru-ments. “Everybody hung out at this place,” McEuen remembers. “We’d look at the records on the racks and try to figure out how Doc

Watson played ‘Black Mountain Rag’ and ‘Deep River Blues,’ or how to play banjo songs by Earl Scruggs or the Dillards or whoever.”

The “everybody” who hung out at McCabe’s included a young Jackson Browne, guitarists Hanna and Les Thompson, and harmonica and jug player Jimmie Fadden. Those four formed what would become the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, rehearsing in Hanna’s mother’s Long Beach garage. On May 13, 1966, the group landed a gig at the Paradox club in Tustin, an hour east in Orange County. “The Dirt Band started playing at the Paradox, and I’d be there,” McEuen remembers. “One night I sat in with them—this was before I joined.” He laughs. “I mean, it was no big deal or anything. I figured I’d rather be standing onstage than be in the dressing room waiting to go on. So I’m like, ‘I’ll go play a song with you.’”

That gig marked the official beginning of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Before then, they were all just kids messing around, hanging out at McCabe’s playing jug-band songs, or at the beach, surfing occasionally. But now, they were onto something. Browne left to focus on a

career as a solo singer-songwriter, and McEuen was in. “You gotta understand, we were really young,” he says. “I was in my first year of college, one guy was a junior in high school, another was a senior in high school, another was trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. I think everybody still lived with their parents. I was over in Garden Grove, some of the other guys lived in Long Beach. It was just a bunch of kids from Southern California.”

McEuen’s brother signed on as manager and got the band its deal with Liberty. Within a year, the Dirt Band had released two albums, a self-titled debut and Ricochet, and performed its Top 40 hit “Buy for Me the Rain” on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1968, they appeared as a jug band playing at a party in the movie For Singles Only, starring Mary Ann Mobley. That led to a role the following year in the western Paint Your Wagon, in which they churned out a ramshackle song called “Hand Me Down That Can o’ Beans” in a rowdy scene featuring a drunken Lee Marvin dancing and singing along, and a typically cool and collected Clint Eastwood watching from the sidelines.

But the members of the Dirt Band weren’t satisfied with the pop sound Liberty was impos-ing on them, and the band took a breather after the initial whirlwind. Everything changed when they returned to the studio to record Uncle Charlie. They’d recruited multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Ibbotson and gained a tremendous amount of creative freedom. Most importantly, they’d picked a great batch of songs to cover: Walker’s “Bojangles,” two Nesmith songs (in addition to “Shelly,” they recorded his moody